Yeesh, what a weekend. Highs and lows. We cleaned more of Riverfront-Lakewood Park. (High.) A crazy man in the park snatched up Alan’s chainsaw, leading to a few tense moments. (Low.) Went downtown for the Dlectricity, an after-dark festival of outdoor art installations, all incorporating light. (Big high.) Shoveled another dead squirrel over the fence at my backfence neighbor, who has taken to plinking at them with a BB gun. (Big low.)

Is Mercury in retrograde? No.

This was the second squirrel. This guy sits out there with a BB gun and uses them for target practice. Which would be OK — I don’t really worry about squirrels — but this is the second one to fall into my yard. The first one hit the driveway, and either died on impact or was dead on arrival. This one managed to make it to my back steps where I nearly stepped on him on my way out to do yard work. He was heaving his last breaths and did not appear to be going peacefully.

I scooped him up with the shovel and carried him to the fence. The guy was standing in his back doorway, aiming directly at me.

HEY, I GOT A DEAD SQUIRREL HERE AND THIS ONE IS YOURS, I yelled, and dumped it over the fence into his yard. He said something like OK and skittered back into his house.

I get that squirrels can be destructive and eat your tomatoes and all, but good lord, if you can’t kill them immediately, don’t even try.

Dlectricity was sublime, though. It’s done in other cities, but it was the first one for Detroit, and man, it was cool — projections on the side of buildins, LED-clad robots rolling around, a light-up bike parade and all sorts of stuff. Perfect for a fall weekend, and Woodward Avenue was thronged. My favorite was three women dancing in unison in a storefront window, in front of film projections. Take that, Art Prize.

I warm up to crazy-ass modern art, the older I get. The more it bugs newspaper editors, the better I like it.

So, some bloggage? This is a concise but on-point comment about something we touched on last week: Germany as a player in the world economy, and what we might learn about it.

Tim Burton’s career arc: What went wrong?

I got some pears at the market, along with my brussels sprouts. I think I’m going to make at least one of these salads. For the millionth time, thanks, Mark Bittman.

A good week to all.

Brothers and sisters, I have spent too many days stuck inside through these early fall days, staring at a computer screen. And the reason I know this is, I finally took a break and got out for a bike ride of decent length on Saturday. And it? Was glorious.

In fact, it was so glorious that it persuaded me to redouble my efforts to get some things back into boxes, and try to restore something like sanity to my day. Work in one box, exercise in another, blogging in another, extracurricular writing in yet another. And more goddamn exercise, because it makes everything better.

Two months ago, I was getting up at 6 to ride to the pool and swim laps. Now I’m lucky to drag my ass out of bed by 7, and little exercise follows. Must. Show. Discipline. Fall is such a dangerous time, in many ways. Not all the changes of the new year are good ones.

So, in the interest of keeping things short, how about a quick few links, and then I can go do some butt crunches or something:

The Columbus Dispatch is generally a very conservative newspaper, but their polling generally has a good track record, and they spend the money to do it right. Something to remember when you see they have Obama up by 9 points (in Ohio), as early voting gets under way.

A column about the NFL refs’ lockout, and what lessons might be learned by American labor. Something I haven’t read yet, and enjoyed.

Our own MMJeff tries a little fun in his weekend column: Did Jesus own a dog?

Anonymity in political fundraising: One cautionary tale. (Link fixed.)

We now return you to October, already in progress. October! Already!

For someone who spends as much time as I do online, I frequently find online research…enervating. That means “causing one to feel drained of energy,” in case you’re one of those “it kind of sounds like ‘invigorating,’ so close enough” people. Tabbed browsing is a wonderful thing, but every so often you look up and discover you have four windows, each with eight tabs open, and half you can’t even remember why they were important.

And then you get an email that says, check out this other thing. Soon: Three more windows, nine more tabs each.

Believe it or not, this is actually an improvement. I used to print everything. Back when someone else was buying my ink and paper, yes.

It’s interesting how we adapt to these things. A giant pile of papers on your desk used to be the sign of a serious person. I kept every letter a reader wrote to me for years and years. When I went on maternity leave (12 years after I started the job), I finally decided I could pitch that stuff. Friends, I regret to tell you that the Brian Stouder papers went with them, but if we don’t have them anymore, well. That’s what happens.

Today, I carry it all with me. Downside: If my laptop ever gets ripped off, I am screwed nine ways from Sunday.

(But yes, I back up. And I use the cloud. So it’ll take a laptop theft and a thermonuclear pulse to really screw me.)

So that was my day. That, and talking on the phone, mostly leaving messages. So you can imagine why, at 5:15, I contrived an errand involving mailing two letters and buying two lemons at the grocery down the street. (Veal scallopini.) Just to have a chance to move arms and legs in something resembling exercise.

Which is my way of saying I don’t have much today. Tomorrow will be better. But a little bloggage:

Bridge is running a big package yesterday and tomorrow, about the need for more and better early-childhood education. Everyone agrees it’s a great investment with big payoff down the line, and yet? Thirty thousand kids don’t get it. Go figure.

We were talking about the German industrial sector the other day? Here’s something about that, from Slate.

And with that, I’m out of gas. A good day to all.

Jeez, what a long day. Out of the house at 6:30 a.m., back up the driveway at 6 p.m. It would have been 5:40, but two wrecks on the freeway necessitated a detour. A quick break to water the drooping plants, change clothes, throw together an entirely improvised pasta — fresh mooz, cherry tomatoes, basil and garlic — then back out the door for a town hall in my very own.

There’s a tax increase on the fall ballot, split into two parts. I was undecided going into the meeting, but the city made a pretty good case. As you might imagine, there is fierce opposition, not all of which is hysterical and tea party-ish. So this is how the meeting ran: The city manager stood up and gave a little welcome, then introduced the comptroller, who ran through the PowerPoint. Then he introduced all the city department heads, the mayor and council, directing them to seats at tables that ran along the perimeter of the room.

“Feel free to ask any questions of these people, and we’ll stay until we’re all done. Just approach whoever you like,” he said.

An old man sitting in front of me stood up and bellowed, WE WANT OUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED!

“Ask whatever questions you like,” the manager said. “That’s what these people are here for — the mayor, the council. Go ahead.”

But of course the old man — and many others — didn’t want questions answered, they wanted to stand behind a microphone and yell. One passed out a flyer demanding CUT THE FAT in all caps. A woman walked to the front of the room and started screeching about duplicate services and so forth. The more she screeched, the more people left.

As crowd control goes, it was a stroke of genius. You can tell the city manager has a background in law enforcement.

The thing is, the opposition has a point: There is a certain amount of fat in the budget, if you consider $150 to buy pizza for poll workers on election days fat. But even if you make them brown-bag it, and sweep up a few thousand more here and there, it’s not going to be enough to make the nut. I walked in undecided, left decided. The yelling didn’t help.

So, on the verge of collapse, I will say this: I watched “Treme,” and lo, it was good. For more, I’m sure Back of Town can catch you up. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, Prospero, read this. (Link is fixed.)

Bridge has been running occasional stories about public servants — or workers, or tax-sucking leeches, depending on your political frame of mind — who aren’t elected. Yesterday’s was about a prison guard, and I learned that as bad as all of the jobs I’ve had in my life have been, at times? They haven’t been as bad as this:

A prisoner goes on “stool watch” when he’s suspected of smuggling in drugs by swallowing a balloon containing a controlled substance. The inmate is forced to sit on a special stool that has a bag below it to catch the inmate’s feces so it can be checked for the drugs.

Repulsive mental picture to the contrary, I’m pleased to learn this, as it gives me a new term for something that will almost certainly be unpleasant:

“No, I can’t go to dinner tonight. Waiting to hear back from the client on that thing last week. You know, stool watch.”

“Getting a test back today in Chem. Total stool watch.”

You can tell it’s almost the end of the week, can’t you? Feelin’ a little hit-the-wall here. All things considered, I’d like to watch a little of “Full Metal Jacket” and drift off to sleep. Love that Lee Ermey.

So, a little bloggage:

Charles Pierce on the new season of “Treme.” (He likes it.)

OID: Stay away from this place, Mr. Funny Car. Just keeeeep driving.

A friend of mine had severe performance anxiety while trying to produce a sperm sample for in vitro fertilization. Tells a funny story about it. Kinda like this one.

And now if you’ll excuse me? I’m going to go pass out.

An actual hour to spare at the end of the day? Well, then, it must be time to jump into something I signed up for months ago — “A History of the World Since 1300,” the Coursera offering I thought I’d take a whirl at.

It is, I figure, the closest I will ever get to Princeton.

Also, I’m writing more about education these days, and online education is a comer. One principal I talked to says every kid in school today should take at least one online class, because that is the future. Who am I to deny the future? Hello, Coursera.

The first shock, however, was as old as 1975, when I first went through the checkout line at the College Book Store in Athens, Ohio: The textbook was something like $80. But you people have been particularly wonderful about using the Kickback Lounge lately, and I have enough Amazon credit built up that it became a what-the-hell purchase. It arrived today, and it’s a very nice textbook, I guess, which is my way of saying: I hope I can sell it in December.

Today’s lecture was in four parts, which is unbelievably convenient, as I was able to watch one part during lunch, another couple before and after my shower, and the last one while I made dinner. “People and Plunderers” was the title, beginning with the concept of wealth and ending with Genghis Khan. Professor Jeremy Adelman is a smooth-lecturin’ Canadian who uses words like “portmanteau” and if he’s unnerved by talking to a camera instead of a classroom amphitheater (because there is no way this isn’t one of those giant classes), he gives no sign.

Because you guys helped pay for the text, I’ll keep you updated on my progress. For now, I need to read Chapter 11.

I have 70,000 classmates, by the way. Are you one of them?

Actually, Genghis was a good end to the day, which wasn’t one of the best in recent memory. Besides the usual annoyances, there was the external stuff — the enervating public discussion about the 47-percent story, plus an armed robbery in Grosse Pointe that…well, I need a new sentence for this. Tell you what: I’m going to italicize all the words that make this story a migraine headache:

On Sunday morning, two young girls, 14 and 11, were walking home from church when they were accosted by a man who shoved one to the ground, showed a gun and stole her cell phone before running off. Oh, and did I mention this? The girls were white, and the man, in addition to being 250 pounds, was black.

Which means that any story about this event will grow repulsive comments like metastasizing cancer, each tumor more irregular around the edges than the last. But because this is Grosse Pointe, it can’t stop there. This was the follow by one of the largest news outlets in the state, yes, which saw fit to mention that the father of one of these girls showed up at the GP city council meeting the following night and had the gall, can you imagine, to call Detroit “a third world country.”

The incident is causing concern among residents of the community, a city that stands in stark contrast, both demographically and economically, to its neighbor Detroit.

Really? There’s a blinding observation for the second paragraph of your story, bub.

Yech, sometimes I think I should have stayed in Columbus. Or moved to San Diego.

So let’s move on to the bloggage, most of which was made obsolete by the terminal velocity of the Romney story. But there was one passage in the David Brooks column that I think needs to be put in neon somewhere:

The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency.

But, of course, no middle-class parent acts as if this is true. Middle-class parents don’t deprive their children of benefits so they can learn to struggle on their own. They shower benefits on their children to give them more opportunities — so they can play travel sports, go on foreign trips and develop more skills.

People are motivated when they feel competent. They are motivated when they have more opportunities. Ambition is fired by possibility, not by deprivation, as a tour through the world’s poorest regions makes clear.

And what the hell, here’s The Onion: Romney Apologizes To Nation’s 150 Million ‘Starving, Filthy Beggars’

Outta here, pals. I have stuff to read. Happy hump day.

I had a long day, and have spent my blogging time tonight watching Rachel Maddow explicate the Romney fundraiser tapes. What do we think of those? Honestly, they made me sad more than anything. I don’t see anything good coming out of a place where a presidential candidate can state that nearly half the country is dependent on government and doesn’t want to take responsibility for themselves, and the audience doesn’t start jeering.

But that’s just me.

On the up side, we live in a country where a stupid magazine cover like this is responded to with the #muslimrage Twitter party, which turned the afternoon into a happier place:

I’m having such a good hair day. No one even knows. #MuslimRage

Lost nephew at the airport but cant yell for him because his name is Jihad. #MuslimRage

I emailed my former Muslim student Mariam, whose last Facebook update was about being SO PISSED about the NHL. If that doesn’t count, I don’t know what is.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’m pretty beat. Carry on amongst yourselves.

Almost forgot: I have a package on Rx drug abuse, medical marijuana and other mind-altering substances running in Bridge. Links will go live after 8 a.m. Hit ’em and keep me employed.

You might think I’m watching “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” but I’m not. It’s one of those shows you don’t have to watch, because so many other people are watching and tweeting about it for you. Check in with a blog or two, and you’re updated in two minutes. And so I can tell you, that if you have a sensitive stomach, you will not want to watch the Honey BB family’s secret recipe for “sketti,” nor will you want to watch them play one of their fun family games, “Guess Whose Breath.”

But if you are, the clips are here.

Perhaps, if you don’t have the belly flutters at the moment, I can reveal what goes into the Honey Boo Boo family sketti recipe? It’s described here and there as “butter and ketchup,” but that’s not true. It’s margarine and ketchup, unless Country Crock is one of those margarines that isn’t even the conventional stuff, but something more like an edible polymer. Every so often, when some reporter is tasked with coming up with a fresh angle on an election pregame story, they’ll dig up the various local elections over whether or not margarine could be sold pre-colored. Yes, young’uns, that was an actual ballot question in many communities, and if I recall correctly, Columbus was one of them.

This website is a little freedom-y for my taste, but I think its account of “the war on margarine” gets the basic facts correct. If I’d been voting then, I’d have opposed colored margarine, which I grew up calling oleo. Nay, nay, let it be sold in its natural fishbelly-white state, and see how much you like it then.

And I used to buy the liquid stuff that comes in a squeeze bottle. It keeps for years, literally, and is still the only perfect product for making grilled-cheese sandwiches.

Now you know (one of) the worst thing(s) about me.

A perfect weekend, weather-wise, and although I wished I’d done something big and outdoorsy, I did get out a bit, pedaling to the bank and hardware store but mostly catching up on everything — dry cleaning, groceries, the usual Saturday grind. It’s easy to imagine this endless summer won’t end, but of course it will. A few more fine, sandal-weather markets, though, please?

Some linkage:

A couple weeks ago, news of a terrible hate crime swept the local airwaves, of a Jewish student at a party in East Lansing when he was accosted by two punks who yelled “Heil Hitler,” knocked him down and stapled his mouth shut.

Or so he said.

The whole story sounded suspect from the start. “Heil Hiter,” really? Stapled his mouth shut? A stapler attack? That the treating physicians didn’t see reason to even flag as such, and the police weren’t treating as such? Yeah. Well. This weekend the ADL said they were no longer convinced, either. I’d love to know what really happened, but I doubt we’ll ever know.

I haven’t read many reviews of Mitch Albom’s new book, but thanks to Jolene for passing along a pretty good one from the WashPost. And Entertainment Weekly — of all places — came up with this great line:

Albom, a speaking-circuit regular, appears to have composed his novel in PowerPoint. Each short chapter is broken up with bold-type subheadings, letting readers skim the already thin narrative ever more quickly, in outline form. Think of all those precious moments saved!

For Brian Stouder, the class ring story — finally.

Off to bed because my eyes won’t stay open anymore. Let the week commence! Let the coffee brew!

You only have to visit Yellowstone National Park once to know how it goes: If the traffic’s slow, there are animals nearby. When you arrive at the park, you’re handed a thick sheaf of material with very explicit, liberally illustrated warnings about the dangers of approaching wildlife. Don’t be fooled by a seemingly passive animal! Etc. There are usually drawings of a bison, moose or elk sticking an antler into some idiot’s ass, with underlined text saying these attacks can be fatal or cause grievous injury.

And yet, talk to any ranger, and year after year, tourists leave the park on a stretcher, and the offending beast has to be put down, because of idiots.

One told me they had a particular problem with Japanese visitors, this being back when Japanese visitors were all over the Western U.S. on holiday. “I don’t know if they don’t understand English well enough, or what, but those guys act like every animal in the park is animatronic or something,” he said. (Hence the illustrated warnings.) Just that summer, one had walked up to a resting bison and plopped right down on the beast’s back, while his friend took a picture, or at least that was the plan until the thing jumped up and stuck the idiot in his hindparts.

So when someone sent me this video, and I noticed the long black hair on the tourists involved, I thought nothing could possibly cleave to ethnic stereotypes quites so neatly, that it must be a coincidence, and to be sure, it seems to be. When you hear the people talking, they speak in perfect American accents. And the kind of blatant lack of common sense that would allow a parent to walk right up to a 1,500-pound bull bison with his children, ignoring every warning sign — the raised tail, the angry head-shaking — and then still act like your kid’s near-death experience is a hoot and a half? That brand of dumb crosses all ethnic boundaries.

Out of the gene pool, Gene.

I had a tough last few days, and I’m still catching up. A good friend died, not unexpectedly but before I was ready for it, which is to say, I had dropped what I expected would be my final note in the mail to him the day before. Sigh. And I’ve been working on a short-deadline package that will require one more rewrite, so I cannot linger here.

Coupla links:

Here’s a hug for the president. Wonder how the Secret Service felt about it. Probably like that bison. Update: NYT said the guy got permission first.

Cops roust an after-hours joint/brothel in Detroit. Does any other place in the country refer to these establishments as blind pigs? (The bars, not the brothels.)

Jonathan Kozol has a new book out, looking back at some of the poor children he’s written about through the years. I lost a lot of interest in Kozol after I heard him say that the answer to homelessness was housing, but there’s no question the guy’s been a hero of the literacy movement.

Let’s try this again tomorrow, when the deadline’s over.

The cleaning lady came today, and did such a good job I walked around the house for two hours, perching on the edges of chairs and glaring at dust motes, lest they land somewhere and screw everything up. We hired this woman to come in twice a month last winter, when I was working three jobs and figured the choices were:

1) Build up a head of resentful steam over the condition of the bathroom, which is used only by Alan and Kate and is technically their responsibility; or

2) Hire someone else to clean it.

It’s been my experience that life will deliver many, many opportunities to be resentful of one’s loved ones, most of them more important than the condition of a bathroom, so I reversed my long-held vow that I would always clean my own house and gave it over to someone else. Her deep-set Slavic eyes haunt me into a tip, most weeks. Our house never gets that bad between visits. I hope she doesn’t run across too much evidence of American sloth when she’s here.

I’m so middle-class, it’s disgusting.

My neighbor in Fort Wayne cleaned houses. She left me with a collection of anecdotes I will treasure forever — the couple whose intervals between visits could be counted by the number of shoes left by the back door; the ones who refused to even clean up the blowing tumbleweeds of dog hair, and in fact let their infant crawl around on the floor in the midst of them; oh, and a few more. (Some came from another neighbor with the same job, who once told me of the uncomfortable conversations she had to have with some clients, about how she would NOT rinse out their bloodstained period panties, because it’s a BIOHAZARD, and do it yourself, you lazy bitch.)

Eh, it was one of those days. Lovely outside, and I did get out for a bit of it, but mostly it was nose/grindstone/other stuff. Redeemed by dinner, yes: Grilled salmon and Mark Bittman’s spicy-sweet green beans. Which you should run out and make, because damn, they’s good. Now we’re watching “Cedar Rapids” on HBO: “I do a pretty fair impersonation of Omar on the HBO program ‘The Wire.'” I hope the people on “The Wire” think that’s as funny as I do.

So, bloggage?

Why are babies so damn cute? So we’ll have more of them, I guess. (After you watch it once, watch it again and note the hand movements of the girl on the left. Babies are so smart.)

The 10 oddest items in the GOP platform. No. 2:

“Ideological bias is deeply entrenched within the current university system. Whatever the solution in private institutions may be, in State institutions the trustees have a responsibility to the public to ensure that their enormous investment is not abused for political indoctrination. We call on State officials to ensure that our public colleges and universities be places of learning and the exchange of ideas, not zones of intellectual intolerance favoring the Left.”

When I’m 100, I hope I’m…not alive to do stuff like this.

Happy Thursday, all.